Space mining and its implications

[geowill989]

I don't know if this has been discussed before, but it's something I've been thinking about recently. I want to talk about space, geology, and what space mining might mean for the precious metals markets.

The Moon

The Artemis Accords, signed by the powers that be in many of the world's most affluent countries, although notably not China and Russia, have opened the door for mining on the Moon. The hope is that the first Moon bases for lunar mining will be set up by 2028, and so it's not probably not unreasonable to think that the first metals will be extracted from the Moon within the next ten years. So what does this mean for the precious metals investor, at a high level?

Of course, the discovery and extraction of huge quantities of metal from the Moon would increase the supply pool and cause the metal prices to nose-dive. From a geological perspective, however, there's good news and bad news, so please bear with my scientific waffle for a moment. The formation of an ore body is essentially a function of two things: the chemical composition of the material from which it formed, and the physical and chemical conditions from which it formed. Regarding the former, the composition of the Moon is astonishingly predictable, because it is a piece of ancient Earth. More specifically, it is a piece of the silicate portion of Earth, meaning it is made from the bits of Earth that do not comprise the iron-rich core. This means the Moon has relatively little iron, and so it formed a very small iron core relative to its overall size (see below).

Gold (and to a lesser degree, silver) are known as siderophile elements, so they really like to be associated with iron. As such, when Earth formed, much of the gold and silver sank down into the centre of Earth, where it could happily sit with iron. About 2% of Earth's gold is in the silicate portion of Earth (i.e., the material from which the Moon is made), so it follows that the Moon has very little gold and silver to start with. Platinum and other metals are a different beast, but I'll come on to that.

So most of the Earth's gold is trapped in the core, which is impossible to get to. The tiny fraction that is left is spread across a huge volume of Earth. How, then, are we able to mine gold here? Well, some mechanism is required to take this scattered gold, concentrate it locally, and produce gold ore. This is where plate tectonics comes in. On Earth, plate tectonics is how the surface of Earth moves. It causes huge volumes of rock to break, melt, transform. It's how we get volcanoes, earthquakes, and most of our ore. Plate tectonics causes a complex array of physical and chemical processes to occur in Earth's crust, and it's the interplay of these processes that causes gold and silver and every other metal we care about to be concentrated in ore bodies. So, without plate tectonics, we don't get ore.

The Moon's small core and its generally small size are some of several reasons why the Moon never had plate tectonics, and so it never underwent the same processes that concentrate gold and silver on Earth. As such, we do not expect to see significant quantities of these metals being extracted from the Moon, so silver and gold investors can breathe a sigh of relief!

But we need to talk about platinum, palladium, rhodium, and all of the other so-called platinum-group metals (PGM). Here on Earth, PGM ore is often found within so-called layered mafic intrusions. These are huge bodies of magma that solidified within Earth's crust. And whilst they are indirectly related to plate tectonics, they could theoretically form from any molten rock, as long as it has the right composition. When the Moon formed, it was molten and it was very similar in composition to the layered mafic intrusions we see on Earth, so it has the potential to host significant quantities of PGM ore. Geologists predict that a layer of PGM ore could be trapped at about 2/3rds of the Moon's radius from its centre. If mined, this layer could vastly increase the PGM supply down here on Earth.

 

Asteroids

Asteroids are bits of rock that orbit the Sun. They tend to be pieces of ancient terrestrial planets that were blown apart by huge impacts long ago. For reasons I won't go into, these ancient planets must have been relatively small, so, much like the Moon, they likely never had plate tectonics. Meteorites are just smaller asteroids, and are split into two broad categories: stony meteorites and iron meteorites.

Stony meteorites represent the silicate, or rocky portions of these ancient planets, and so are typically similar in composition to the Moon or the Earth's crust and mantle. Because of a lack of plate tectonics on the planets from which they came, these meteorites never show significant enrichment in precious metals.

Iron meteorites represent the cores of fragmented planets. Remember, gold and silver are siderophile elements, so they are often strongly concentrated in these iron cores. The same is true of many of the PGMs. It is thought, then, that it could become economically viable to mine large asteroids comprising mostly iron core material. 

The big problem with asteroid mining is that it is technologically challenging, even compared to Moon mining. The potential upside, however, is astonishing. We could see practically limitless supplies of the precious metals we so rarely find on Earth. And whilst this is decades from being a reality, it would cause chaos in the precious metals markets.

 

TLDR

There is probably no gold or silver on the Moon, but there is lots of platinum and palladium. Asteroids, whilst very difficult to mine, can contain huge quantities of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. You won't find Bitcoin on either, though. 

[Thelonerangershorse]

2 hours ago, geowill989 said:

It is thought, then, that it could become economically viable to mine large asteroids comprising mostly iron core material. 

 

2 hours ago, geowill989 said:

it would cause chaos in the precious metals markets.

The two are an oxymoron, Space exploration is EXPENSIVE, if you ever managed to recover an asteroid with 1,000,000 tons of gold, diamonds or PGM's, you'd crash the price and never recover your investment.

[geowill989]

Hence the 'could', but we have to keep in mind that it won't just be profit-driven private companies running space exploration programmes. There's a huge political piece here that I didn't even touch on. No one yet knows how diplomacy can or should be handled in space. Many would argue that extracting all of these resources and using them for the greater good of humanity is a better way forward.

I tried to make it clear that asteroid mining, if it does happen, won't happen any time soon. Moon mining, however, is a very real possibility in the near-ish future.

[Oddjob]

Zee Germans have been mining the moon for years......

 

 

[CANV]

2 currently insurmountable problems…. Gravity and the atmosphere. One means getting the stuff up there is hugely expensive.  The other means getting it back is hugely expensive.  However  Once my antigravity motor is working them we are off to the races 

[LawrenceChard]

23 hours ago, geowill989 said:

There is probably no gold or silver on the Moon, but there is lots of platinum and palladium. Asteroids, whilst very difficult to mine, can contain huge quantities of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. You won't find Bitcoin on either, though. 

I keep hearing that silver is going to the moon, along with BitCoin, so there should be plenty there before too long!

😎

[Silverman2U]

On 01/08/2022 at 13:38, Thelonerangershorse said:

 

The two are an oxymoron, Space exploration is EXPENSIVE, if you ever managed to recover an asteroid with 1,000,000 tons of gold, diamonds or PGM's, you'd crash the price and never recover your investment.

Yes even the notion you had them even if you didn’t sell and held would crash the market! Best not tell anyone you have that much on your asteroid. 

[Silverman2U]

1 minute ago, Silverman2U said:

Yes even the notion you had them even if you didn’t sell and held would crash the market! Best not tell anyone you have that much on your asteroid. 

😎 

[Silverman2U]

On 01/08/2022 at 14:07, Oddjob said:

Zee Germans have been mining the moon for years......

 

 

Why do I think of the Russians when I see this video 🤔 …. In the middle of a war their economy seems to be doing a lot better than the rest of us 🤔… who is gaining from politics right now? One country can take on the world … and economical come out on top? Scary stuff. Glad I am learning Chinese that’s all I can say  

Edited September 13, 2022 by Silverman2U

[westminstrel]

I am rather simple minded in this regard, but my common sense is telling me that the cost of mining in space would, at least for the foreseeable future, be so prohibitive, that even if it were to happen, the premiums for “space mined metal” would be orders of magnitude that the common man wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway.

[geowill989]

3 minutes ago, westminstrel said:

I am rather simple minded in this regard, but my common sense is telling me that the cost of mining in space would, at least for the foreseeable future, be so prohibitive, that even if it were to happen, the premiums for “space mined metal” would be orders of magnitude that the common man wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway.

This is absolutely true. Moon mining is definitely going to happen in the near future, but will be more of an academic venture for a while.

[Oddjob]

You'd need either a fully automated mining, processing and shipping operation or a colony of purpose breed mining slaves that worked for free as mining FIFO costs would be out of this world.

The low budget movie "Moon" sets out a most probably outcome re how it'll be done...minus maybe the clones.

 

[Silverlocks]

I think the killer app of mining in space is for stuff you intend to use in space.  While it's possible that you could find enough (say) palladium somewhere to make it worthwhile to smelt and return to earth, the biggest cost today is getting stuff into orbit.

If we were to develop a fully re-usable orbit shuttle (with scramjet technology, for example) and bring the cost of getting stuff into orbit down by an order of magnitude or two, then it's conceivable that we could find a business case for large scale industry in space.  In that case, mining water from lunar regolith or mars could be worth it as the delta-v to get it where you want is likely to be significantly less than the delta-v needed to get it off earth.

 

[Scootermuppet]

🤔 Isn't Red Dwarf a Mining Ship? - Jupiter Mining Corporation IIRC?

Proves it can be done, right...? 😉

 

[SidS]

I bet Wonga's got a view on this.

Gordon Brown probably sold off our gold to fund a feasibility study into the benefits of gold mining in space. It's something a politician would do.

Edited September 13, 2022 by SidS